New SGU Fic: Sanity in the Green Places (K) Stargate Country
Title: Sanity in the Green Places
Author: kimmy4eytj
Rating: G = K
Content Flags: none
Spoilers: The Hunt S2E16
Character Note: Everett Young, Dale Volker, Nicholas Rush
Pairing: Young/TJ, implied TJ/Varro
Word Count: 1935
Summary: “Sanity protector. Got to come up with something better than that.”
Author's Notes: Written for the March 2013 challenge "Something in the way of green" at stargatecountry. If you are moved to leave a comment, please leave it at my LJ. Thanks.
~~~[][][]~~~
Other than the constant background vibration of the FTL drive, the rhythm of his feet hitting the deck, his heartbeat and breathing were the only sounds. As Young jogged, his mind cleared of the minutia that was his daily routine; meetings, petty grievances to be adjudicated, food and water supplies, and wondering if Destiny could handle their next alien encounter.
Today, Young wanted to be alone on his run, to stretch his legs, to test his endurance. TJ said it was too soon to exert himself heavily, but he hated the fragility of his body after an injury. He needed to feel strong.
That cold, rainy night, death had come swift and random. The injury he had sustained on Greer's Space Deer planet could have killed him. Just an inch to the right and he would have bled out on that mossy ground.
He didn't have many choices after the creatures ambushed them. Time had been running out to find TJ alive. He had to trust that Varro would find her. And so Young had given his rival his sidearm and returned to Destiny without her.
That hopeful smile TJ gave Varro when he entered the man's quarters had crushed his heart. It took all his willpower to offer his own smile and appear indifferent to their longing. He knew that distracting euphoria, that intense awareness of her every movement, the anticipation of touch.
Guilt had become a powerful suppression for his desire. Too many burned bridges to mend between them. However, after almost loosing TJ, he could no longer deny his feelings.
He'd been a fool to give way to Varro.
Not any more.
With concerted effort, Young lengthening his stride. He had been running for twenty minutes and his legs were burning with his exertions. Every swing of his left arm brought a tightness along his neck and pulled in his shoulder.
The corridor curved at a right angle into an area of the ship he hadn't been to before. It opened up into an atrium and he slowed to a stop. FTL glow filtered in through portals along the wall, insufficient to illuminate the several story tall space.
Young rested his hands on his hips, breathing hard. He briefly shook out each leg, and turned in a circle examining his surroundings. His sweat dampened T-shirt clung to his torso. Warm huffs of his breath misted in cooler air and an slight draft chilled his skin, raising goosebumps on his arms.
The room had volume not unlike their greenhouse but felt intimate. He walked the area looking for some clue that would tell him what the Ancients had designed for this space.
Space was a premium on a spaceship, therefore necessity drove function. And this space seemed too exorbitantly open and without discernible purpose.
Young stood opposite of the hatch and identified its controls, then followed with his eyes along the walls looked for any other panels.
After several passes, he noticed a pattern of indentations along the wall set every few meters at about hip level. Bent at the waist, Young went along the wall using his fingertips to search for anomalies. Closest to the hatch, he heard a click as he passed over that panel, his fingers pressing into the wall.
A whirring sound accompanied a set of controls emerging from the wall. While he had been on Destiny almost a year, he had not picked up enough of the Ancients' language to feel confident in deciphering the control symbols with any accuracy.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Young pressed the upper left button.
The light from the FTL disappeared and Young swung around as shutters slid over the view-ports. Now, only the control panel illuminated the room with weak assistance from the corridor lighting.
“Okay.” He turned back to the controls and touched an adjacent button in line that glowed a soft yellow. “Next.”
The hatch rolled shut, seeming loud in the silence of the room.
Young pulled his radio from a pocket. “Dr. Volker, this is Young.”
A burst of static came from the radio followed by Volker's response. “Go ahead, Colonel.”
“Can you pull up Destiny's diagram and query as to my location?”
Young could hear the smile in Volker's voice. “Are you lost, Colonel?”
“Just doing a little exploring. Can you tell where I am?”
“Hang on a second.” Young heard the sounds of Volker moving and buttons being pressed while he kept the radio keyed at his end. “Yeah. Um...”
“What is it, Doctor?”
“Um, you are a fair distance outside our habitable area. I mean, that area is still habitable. Its just that no one has any reason to go there. I mean as far as we know anyway. It's just empty rooms.”
“All right, I'm going to be here a little while longer, then head back. Young out.”
He focused on the multicoloured display. The first two buttons closed off the room. Young turned around, placing his back to the wall and stared at the emptiness of the space. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he listened. Something wasn't right. It took a few moments for him to realize that he couldn't hear the FTL drive or feel it's vibration through the plating. The room was soundproof.
Why such a large room on Destiny without an obvious purpose?
It had a large volume, a several storied ceiling, but no other levels that he discerned accessing that height. There were no balconies. It had one entrance, but that was the norm on Destiny. There were no furnishings. Almost every room held some sort of furnishing. Even the Gate Room had two consoles, the Gate, and it had more than three entrances.
There didn't seem to be any artificial lighting, so what was the Ancients' plan for this space? What would he use this room for if he had built Destiny?
Nothing came to mind. Its dimensions were all wrong. It needed more horizontal than vertical space to be of practical function for humans. He doubted the Ancients would have made a room for non-corporeal ascended beings to hang about. They hadn't even reached ascended status when they launched Destiny.
“The only way to find out is to press a few more buttons.” His voice sounded tiny within the sealed space.
Young considered the controls. “Might as well continue in order.” He pressed the next button in his linear pattern.
Vapour descended from the ceiling much like had fallen in the chair interface room except it did not lower the room's temperature. It accumulated in the centre of the space, forming a thick vertical tube before spreading out like a mushroom cloud above his head, expanding to fill the entire space and held together by an unseen barrier.
The hatch slid open halting his hand movement to the next button.
“What happened to studying something before touching it? ” Nicholas Rush sauntered into the room with a glance toward him as he continued to the column of mist. The hatch closed behind him.
Young watched the scientist walk into the fog, but did not engage Rush's baiting snip. The cloud was undisturbed within its confines as Rush emerged around the far side.
“Can you even decipher the symbols you're all touchy feely with? No? I seem to recall a standing order from you about not firing anything up until my science team had a chance to check it first.”
“Are you done?” Young said.
“Just enjoying the moment.”
“Your moment is over.” Young turned back to the panel. “Can you tell what these symbols mean?”
Rush joined him, taking a few moments to examine the control panel.
“This is an unusual combination of markings,” Rush said. He pointed along the entire lower row of buttons. “These are not Gate symbols, not constellations or galaxies, however they denote quantitative relation, magnitude, velocity. These others reflect compositional aspects.”
“What kind of relationship do they have to each other?”
Rush shook his head.
“What about the mist? It came out of the ceiling, but didn't lower the rooms' temperature and you were able to walk through it without disturbing its form or effect you.”
“Yes. Interesting that.”
“That's your great scientific opinion?”
Rush shrugged his shoulders. “You can continue pressing buttons as seems to be your want.”
Young sighed, then pressed the next button in his sequence.
The cloud infused with all the colours of a rainbow, swirling and intermixing.
Young looked at Rush. The scientist spread his hands in an 'I don't know' gesture.
Before Young could stop him, Rush had run his fingers over all the remaining buttons at once.
“Rush,” Young barked.
Within the blink of his eye, the vapour transformed into a series of solar systems with resident planets. Then it zoomed in to one of the planets with such speed that Young felt his stomach protest trying to catch up with his visual perception.
The vapour changed shape and colour spilling out from its enclosure to surround the two men and filling the entire volume of the room. The temperature warmed and the air became humid as the fog altered, forming the surface of a planet covered with towering green vegetation, ferns with thick trunked trees wrapped by brown vines descending to the floor.
“This must be tied into Destiny's database of planets that the seed ships have visited,” Rush proclaimed, excited. “We could see what the planets look like before we get there. Find out any dangers or what use they might be to us.”
“You've got access to all that information from the Bridge or Control Interface Room, why duplicate it here and take up valuable ship space?”
“Maybe the Ancients were a visual people.”
The vapour continued to transform around them. A fall of water carved out a horseshoe in a cliff face, falling into a pool of disturbed water. The shore was teeming with ferns in every shade of green, and deep mats of red, yellow and green lichen interwoven over fallen boulders. Water spray chilled the air around them.
“Do you feel that?” Rush asked.
“The temperature changed again with the setting.”
“No. It's more than that.” Rush stuck his hand out and small droplets of water vapour beaded upon his skin. “Destiny is letting us feel the actual conditions. It's like a hologram, only you can truly experience the premises without actually being there.”
Young knew now what the Ancients had made.
“This was for Destiny's crew that never arrived,” Young marvelled. “So they could get off the ship without actually leaving it. A sanity protector.”
“Yes, it is probably both uses,” Rush said. “And many that we haven't thought of yet.” Rush turned back to the panel intent on pushing more buttons when Young grasped Rush's upper arm.
“Let's turn it off for now. Study it, then when you're ready we'll introduce it to the crew with instructions on its use.”
“Back to study again, when we've already experienced what it can do.”
“Study first. We don't know that this hologram is its only function. No surprises. I'll get Camile to help you.”
“She's not a scientist.”
“But she is an HR person. She'll know best how to introduce it to the crew. For now, study.”
Rush reluctantly nodded his head. Young pressed the wall panel and the controls slid back inside. When they turned to leave, the room was again silent, slightly chilly and filled with the flickering FTL lights from the re-opened view-ports.
“Sanity protector. Got to come up with something better than that,” Rush said as the hatch shut behind them.
“Knock yourself out.”
© kimmy4eytj, March 2013
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of MGM, ACME Shark, and Spyglass Productions and their subsidiaries. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment not monetary purposes and no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. Previously unrecognized characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Author: kimmy4eytj
Rating: G = K
Content Flags: none
Spoilers: The Hunt S2E16
Character Note: Everett Young, Dale Volker, Nicholas Rush
Pairing: Young/TJ, implied TJ/Varro
Word Count: 1935
Summary: “Sanity protector. Got to come up with something better than that.”
Author's Notes: Written for the March 2013 challenge "Something in the way of green" at stargatecountry. If you are moved to leave a comment, please leave it at my LJ. Thanks.
~~~[][][]~~~
Other than the constant background vibration of the FTL drive, the rhythm of his feet hitting the deck, his heartbeat and breathing were the only sounds. As Young jogged, his mind cleared of the minutia that was his daily routine; meetings, petty grievances to be adjudicated, food and water supplies, and wondering if Destiny could handle their next alien encounter.
Today, Young wanted to be alone on his run, to stretch his legs, to test his endurance. TJ said it was too soon to exert himself heavily, but he hated the fragility of his body after an injury. He needed to feel strong.
That cold, rainy night, death had come swift and random. The injury he had sustained on Greer's Space Deer planet could have killed him. Just an inch to the right and he would have bled out on that mossy ground.
He didn't have many choices after the creatures ambushed them. Time had been running out to find TJ alive. He had to trust that Varro would find her. And so Young had given his rival his sidearm and returned to Destiny without her.
That hopeful smile TJ gave Varro when he entered the man's quarters had crushed his heart. It took all his willpower to offer his own smile and appear indifferent to their longing. He knew that distracting euphoria, that intense awareness of her every movement, the anticipation of touch.
Guilt had become a powerful suppression for his desire. Too many burned bridges to mend between them. However, after almost loosing TJ, he could no longer deny his feelings.
He'd been a fool to give way to Varro.
Not any more.
With concerted effort, Young lengthening his stride. He had been running for twenty minutes and his legs were burning with his exertions. Every swing of his left arm brought a tightness along his neck and pulled in his shoulder.
The corridor curved at a right angle into an area of the ship he hadn't been to before. It opened up into an atrium and he slowed to a stop. FTL glow filtered in through portals along the wall, insufficient to illuminate the several story tall space.
Young rested his hands on his hips, breathing hard. He briefly shook out each leg, and turned in a circle examining his surroundings. His sweat dampened T-shirt clung to his torso. Warm huffs of his breath misted in cooler air and an slight draft chilled his skin, raising goosebumps on his arms.
The room had volume not unlike their greenhouse but felt intimate. He walked the area looking for some clue that would tell him what the Ancients had designed for this space.
Space was a premium on a spaceship, therefore necessity drove function. And this space seemed too exorbitantly open and without discernible purpose.
Young stood opposite of the hatch and identified its controls, then followed with his eyes along the walls looked for any other panels.
After several passes, he noticed a pattern of indentations along the wall set every few meters at about hip level. Bent at the waist, Young went along the wall using his fingertips to search for anomalies. Closest to the hatch, he heard a click as he passed over that panel, his fingers pressing into the wall.
A whirring sound accompanied a set of controls emerging from the wall. While he had been on Destiny almost a year, he had not picked up enough of the Ancients' language to feel confident in deciphering the control symbols with any accuracy.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Young pressed the upper left button.
The light from the FTL disappeared and Young swung around as shutters slid over the view-ports. Now, only the control panel illuminated the room with weak assistance from the corridor lighting.
“Okay.” He turned back to the controls and touched an adjacent button in line that glowed a soft yellow. “Next.”
The hatch rolled shut, seeming loud in the silence of the room.
Young pulled his radio from a pocket. “Dr. Volker, this is Young.”
A burst of static came from the radio followed by Volker's response. “Go ahead, Colonel.”
“Can you pull up Destiny's diagram and query as to my location?”
Young could hear the smile in Volker's voice. “Are you lost, Colonel?”
“Just doing a little exploring. Can you tell where I am?”
“Hang on a second.” Young heard the sounds of Volker moving and buttons being pressed while he kept the radio keyed at his end. “Yeah. Um...”
“What is it, Doctor?”
“Um, you are a fair distance outside our habitable area. I mean, that area is still habitable. Its just that no one has any reason to go there. I mean as far as we know anyway. It's just empty rooms.”
“All right, I'm going to be here a little while longer, then head back. Young out.”
He focused on the multicoloured display. The first two buttons closed off the room. Young turned around, placing his back to the wall and stared at the emptiness of the space. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he listened. Something wasn't right. It took a few moments for him to realize that he couldn't hear the FTL drive or feel it's vibration through the plating. The room was soundproof.
Why such a large room on Destiny without an obvious purpose?
It had a large volume, a several storied ceiling, but no other levels that he discerned accessing that height. There were no balconies. It had one entrance, but that was the norm on Destiny. There were no furnishings. Almost every room held some sort of furnishing. Even the Gate Room had two consoles, the Gate, and it had more than three entrances.
There didn't seem to be any artificial lighting, so what was the Ancients' plan for this space? What would he use this room for if he had built Destiny?
Nothing came to mind. Its dimensions were all wrong. It needed more horizontal than vertical space to be of practical function for humans. He doubted the Ancients would have made a room for non-corporeal ascended beings to hang about. They hadn't even reached ascended status when they launched Destiny.
“The only way to find out is to press a few more buttons.” His voice sounded tiny within the sealed space.
Young considered the controls. “Might as well continue in order.” He pressed the next button in his linear pattern.
Vapour descended from the ceiling much like had fallen in the chair interface room except it did not lower the room's temperature. It accumulated in the centre of the space, forming a thick vertical tube before spreading out like a mushroom cloud above his head, expanding to fill the entire space and held together by an unseen barrier.
The hatch slid open halting his hand movement to the next button.
“What happened to studying something before touching it? ” Nicholas Rush sauntered into the room with a glance toward him as he continued to the column of mist. The hatch closed behind him.
Young watched the scientist walk into the fog, but did not engage Rush's baiting snip. The cloud was undisturbed within its confines as Rush emerged around the far side.
“Can you even decipher the symbols you're all touchy feely with? No? I seem to recall a standing order from you about not firing anything up until my science team had a chance to check it first.”
“Are you done?” Young said.
“Just enjoying the moment.”
“Your moment is over.” Young turned back to the panel. “Can you tell what these symbols mean?”
Rush joined him, taking a few moments to examine the control panel.
“This is an unusual combination of markings,” Rush said. He pointed along the entire lower row of buttons. “These are not Gate symbols, not constellations or galaxies, however they denote quantitative relation, magnitude, velocity. These others reflect compositional aspects.”
“What kind of relationship do they have to each other?”
Rush shook his head.
“What about the mist? It came out of the ceiling, but didn't lower the rooms' temperature and you were able to walk through it without disturbing its form or effect you.”
“Yes. Interesting that.”
“That's your great scientific opinion?”
Rush shrugged his shoulders. “You can continue pressing buttons as seems to be your want.”
Young sighed, then pressed the next button in his sequence.
The cloud infused with all the colours of a rainbow, swirling and intermixing.
Young looked at Rush. The scientist spread his hands in an 'I don't know' gesture.
Before Young could stop him, Rush had run his fingers over all the remaining buttons at once.
“Rush,” Young barked.
Within the blink of his eye, the vapour transformed into a series of solar systems with resident planets. Then it zoomed in to one of the planets with such speed that Young felt his stomach protest trying to catch up with his visual perception.
The vapour changed shape and colour spilling out from its enclosure to surround the two men and filling the entire volume of the room. The temperature warmed and the air became humid as the fog altered, forming the surface of a planet covered with towering green vegetation, ferns with thick trunked trees wrapped by brown vines descending to the floor.
“This must be tied into Destiny's database of planets that the seed ships have visited,” Rush proclaimed, excited. “We could see what the planets look like before we get there. Find out any dangers or what use they might be to us.”
“You've got access to all that information from the Bridge or Control Interface Room, why duplicate it here and take up valuable ship space?”
“Maybe the Ancients were a visual people.”
The vapour continued to transform around them. A fall of water carved out a horseshoe in a cliff face, falling into a pool of disturbed water. The shore was teeming with ferns in every shade of green, and deep mats of red, yellow and green lichen interwoven over fallen boulders. Water spray chilled the air around them.
“Do you feel that?” Rush asked.
“The temperature changed again with the setting.”
“No. It's more than that.” Rush stuck his hand out and small droplets of water vapour beaded upon his skin. “Destiny is letting us feel the actual conditions. It's like a hologram, only you can truly experience the premises without actually being there.”
Young knew now what the Ancients had made.
“This was for Destiny's crew that never arrived,” Young marvelled. “So they could get off the ship without actually leaving it. A sanity protector.”
“Yes, it is probably both uses,” Rush said. “And many that we haven't thought of yet.” Rush turned back to the panel intent on pushing more buttons when Young grasped Rush's upper arm.
“Let's turn it off for now. Study it, then when you're ready we'll introduce it to the crew with instructions on its use.”
“Back to study again, when we've already experienced what it can do.”
“Study first. We don't know that this hologram is its only function. No surprises. I'll get Camile to help you.”
“She's not a scientist.”
“But she is an HR person. She'll know best how to introduce it to the crew. For now, study.”
Rush reluctantly nodded his head. Young pressed the wall panel and the controls slid back inside. When they turned to leave, the room was again silent, slightly chilly and filled with the flickering FTL lights from the re-opened view-ports.
“Sanity protector. Got to come up with something better than that,” Rush said as the hatch shut behind them.
“Knock yourself out.”
© kimmy4eytj, March 2013
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and places are the property of MGM, ACME Shark, and Spyglass Productions and their subsidiaries. This piece of fan fiction was created for entertainment not monetary purposes and no infringement on copyrights or trademarks was intended. Previously unrecognized characters and places, and this story, are copyrighted to the author. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.